


Hostile Skin

by fascinationex



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Bodyswap, Gen, Modern character in a robot, unfinished work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23097316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex
Summary: Anita loves cats, knitting, and awkwardly working around her anxiety problems and constant nagging worries. She could not be less qualified to accidentally hijack the body of a Decepticon, but here she is.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53





	Hostile Skin

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. This work is unfinished and may never be finished. Please do not read it if you are not okay with that.

“I really like it,” said Anita, running one finger over the highly polished surface of a stove-top. Everything was like that: new, pristine, polished. The walls were stark and white, just waiting for a cross stitch sampler in a frame, or even a quilting project. 

The apartment had been converted recently from something else, and was next to a funeral parlour, so although that was kind of morbid, it certainly wouldn’t be loud. Across the street was a run down and more or less abandoned… something-or-other. 

“Military research,” said the agent knowledgeably, when Anita gestured to the concrete and squat, unlovely buildings through the window. It was a little foggy outside today, so the buildings had an eerie look, like they’d sprung up out of a grey, empty backdrop. “Private. De-funded. They say it was into robotics or something, but – doesn’t really make any difference now, does it?” 

“I suppose not,” Anita agreed. She peered out the window at the sprawl of drab buildings, lightless and still and huddling behind their heavy barbed wire fencing. “I suppose I just – erm, from the pictures online, I didn’t expect the location to be quite so,” creepy and barren, “industrial?” 

“Ah,” said the agent. “Well, the two units here were built for the consulting staff, as far as I know, and only recently converted for regular residential use. And for the price, they’re an incredible bargain. You’re not going to find better value for money anywhere.” 

“Yes,” Anita agreed. “The apartment is wonderful.” 

“You have a car, don’t you? I’m sure I saw you drive up today?” 

“I – Yes,” she nodded. She wondered when the agent had spotted her arriving. She didn’t like driving much, anyway; other people on the road made her nervous. “But –” 

“So access to public transit isn’t really an issue for you, that’s excellent. Come on, let me show you the secure car park!” 

Obediently, Anita stopped trying to express her reservations and instead followed the agent down to the underground parking, which required a fob to even access. It beeped once, and then the doors rolled up and all the lights overhead came on with a knee-jarring _thump_. The space was empty and vast, entirely grey concrete. She guessed it was meant to be shared by staff from across the street, too, but the broad and empty expanse of concrete did not really make her feel much better about the location. 

“Look, I know it seems a bit rough here now, but you can see how the areas further in have all gentrified. Give it a few years, and—” 

Anita nodded, but she’d already stopped listening. She didn’t want to live in the industrial circle of hell, and she thought that was a pretty firm desire on her behalf. If she was careful and compromised on some of the other things she wanted—space, storage, maybe the car park—she could probably find somewhere to live that was a little less like the backdrop to a horror film. 

“I’ll be in contact,” she assured the agent when they finally exited the building. She would, too. She’d email pretty shortly to let them know she didn’t want it. 

“Of course, yeah, you have my contact information, don’t you, and I have your—” the agent waved a phone as they walked. She nodded. 

“There’s been a lot of interest, so you’ll need to decide fast. I’ll let you know about any other offers via text,” the agent said, even as Anita stood by his car, waiting for him to get in and leave. She clasped her hands behind her back. It was cold outside and she hoped this did not get drawn out for too long. She wasn’t wearing gloves. 

“Sure,” she said. She could ignore a few texts, but she didn’t think she’d be able to leave any time soon if she tried to explain that she didn’t like this place. The agent seemed particularly tenacious, and Anita did not like conflict very much. 

She also wanted him to leave before she did. Maybe it was silly, but she didn’t want him to walk her to her car and see where she turned to go, or follow her in his, somehow. She did not actually believe that he would, of course, but the idea nagged at her anyway, and it was pretty easy to assuage the irrational anxiety by just waiting for him to go first. It didn’t cost her anything worse than a few more minutes standing around in the cold. And it made her feel better. 

“It was good to meet you,” she said politely, smiling. “I’ll let you know.” 

His car door thumped closed finally. He waved. Anita unhooked her hands from behind her back and waved back. 

She watched him reverse out into the completely empty street, rocking back and forward on her heels slowly. It really was getting cold. 

Finally, the agent left, and Anita tightened her grip on the strap of her bag, looked warily around, and began to make her way back to her own car. At least the whole area being utterly devoid of human life made it less likely that she’d encounter any surprise people, even if she did sort of feel like pyramid head might emerge from behind some derelict industrial building to murder her at any moment. 

Anita fisted her keys in one hand, very aware of their heft and relative sharpness, and elected not to put her headphones in. It was entirely probable that she just felt unsafe here due to the legacy of a thousand horror films, but she walked quickly anyway – 

–right up until a big, fluffy white cat wriggled out from beneath the undercarriage of a black truck that looked like it had been collecting dust on the street for months. It darted across the footpath on small, neat little paws, and then paused, peering up at the barbed fence beyond. There was no convenient gap beneath to let it through, and the cat seemed to contemplate that for a moment. 

Predictably, Anita slowed sown. The truck really was empty, and still coated in dirt that had been left long enough to become pattered with the sporadic end-of-autumn rain. There was nobody actually around. It was just Anita and a large, fluffy white cat. Its coat was only a little discoloured from the outdoors, so it was presumably someone’s pet. 

She paused. It was not that Anita was especially worried about the cat – cats sometimes wandered, and usually showed up back home at around dinner time, with an array of mysterious things caught in their fluffy trousers, like taunting little hints at secret adventures. 

No, it was more that Anita’s natural urge to fuss at a fluffy cat was at war with her unsettled feeling about the deserted, industrial area. 

After a wary second, Anita crouched down and made a clicking sound, stretching her hand out toward the cat. “Hi there, baby,” she cooed, wiggling her fingers at it.

The cat gave her its attention, but did not move. Its tail twitched restlessly on the footpath. A moment later, it inched closer, stretching its body sinuously out to get a whiff of whatever Anita’s fingers might have smelled like – metal, probably, from her key ring, and perhaps like fresh paint from the apartment she’d just been looking at. It wrinkled its nose and pulled away. 

“Oh, you’re such a handsome kitty, aren’t you. Look at your big, blue eyes, my goodness,” she added aloud. It might be deaf – the pure white cats with blue eyes sometimes were, for whatever reason. Maybe it couldn’t even hear her crooning to it like an idiot. Either way, while Anita plainly had its attention, it didn’t seem very inclined to come any closer and allow her to rub her hands through its soft white fluff. It leaned back from her fingers, having deduced that she did not have any food or anything else worth coming closer for, and flicked one of its pointed white ears toward some noise that only it could hear in the distance. 

“Okay,” Anita said. Clearly there would be no fussing, and it was still cold and kind of creepy out here anyway. With a soft grunt at the stiffness of her cold joints, she got back up. 

Her movement surprised the cat. It leapt wildly for the fence, catching the chain fence with its claws, and it zoomed right up the links with a series of clicks. 

Anita was barely done being startled before it was right over the top, barbed wire be damned, and racing away across the other side. She glanced at the sign that said _TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED_. Presumably this did not apply to cats. 

She had not meant to startle the poor little thing, but she was prepared to shrug it off – or at least, she was until she noticed a clump of bloodied fur stuck to the sharp wire. 

Great. She’d scared some poor cat into injuring itself. A cut on a leg or something was one thing, but visions of a badly bleeding cat hobbling around an abandoned warehouse in the dark somewhere made Anita feel terribly guilty. She licked her teeth. 

Maybe there’d be someone with access to the place who could keep an eye out for the cat? She looked at the signs for a phone number, but there didn’t seem to be one. After a second, she flipped her phone open and tried an internet search, but no real references to the place even came up, aside from one social media post on the funeral parlour’s page. 

Oh, well. She’d tried. How much more effort could Anita reasonably be expected to put in? 

She began walking again, but she only got three steps before became clear that the pale tuft of fur with its bloody stain was going to _haunt her._

“This is crazy,” she muttered to herself, even as she peered critically at the chain fence with its barbed wire topper. 

The entrance she could see all the way down the block was closed with a chain so thick that she could see its bulk even from her vantage. She couldn’t get in there, clearly. She returned her attention to the chain links and barbed wire, at the top of which the reddened tuft of cat fur taunted her. She could almost have reached it with her fingers, if she stood up on her toes. 

She could climb, but she would have to find a way to avoid… 

“Oh my god,” she muttered aloud, even as she was doing it, even as she stripped her coat off with short, angry movements, “it’s a _cat._ ” 

She shivered in the sudden cold. Her skin broke out in tiny goosepimples. It was fine, she told herself, she could put the heating on when she got back to the car.

Anita looked nervously around. Alright. Okay. Anxiety coiled in her guts, making her heart beat faster. There really was nobody around to see her.

Even as she gripped one sleeve tightly and flung the coat up over the barbed wire, she knew she was being ridiculous. One sleeve flopped over the other side, leaving the bulk of the coat slung over the sharpest bits. Cautiously, Anita stretched up on her tiptoes and tied the sleeves to each other between the links that made up the fence.

“Okay,” she said. 

This was stupid. She was going to end up in some ‘weird shit’ column in the local paper. 

_What if I killed that cat_ , she wondered. Again. Christ. She was really going to... 

The fence wobbled and sagged a little when she put her weight on it, and she felt a tiny moment of hope that it might just come down completely with sufficient pressure. But the fence held, so up Anita went, one step at a time. She paused at the top of the fence, not suddenly trying to figure out how to manoeuvre herself over it. 

Awkwardly she slung one leg over the coat and straddled it. There was an ugly noise as the coat ripped, and she felt a sharp wire point jam into her thigh right through her jeans. She paused there, frozen and blinking at the sudden shock of pain. Maybe this was what the cat had felt like, she thought. 

Okay. This was… clearly not going well, but she couldn’t just stay up here – god, what was she going to do? Call emergency services? She really would end up on the news. 

Okay, the coat was, uh, ruined, and she was, erm, bleeding a little, so – 

This was when Anita’s clinging koala impression failed her: her coat finished ripping, her grip slipped, she shrieked at the top of her lungs, and a sharp pang of pain went through her leg when the barbed wire bit further into her thigh. 

The time between her brain going blank with alarm and her body hitting the cement on the other side of the fence seemed to vanish entirely. Anita’s panicked cry was still echoing when she gasped out all her remaining breath upon impact. She saw stars. 

A second later, the remains of her coat gave up and followed her down, landing with a soft _fwap_ upon her shoe. 

“Unghh,” said Anita. She rolled to her back and stared at the sky for a long second while she caught her breath. 

She had… regrets. 

Also she had ripped clothes and a few bleeding injuries. 

But mainly: regrets. 

Holy hell, the concrete was cold. She thought the racing of her heart should have kept her warm, but she was unpleasantly aware of how necessary her coat had been.

She got to her feet and rubbed her thighs, gently feeling out the damage. Her jeans were totalled, much like her bloodied and torn coat, but the cuts weren’t so bad. She would have to check when her last tetanus shot had been when she got home. 

Anita glanced back at the fence. She had no idea how she was going to get _back_ over, but she was on the inside now. She might as well find out if the fluffy cat was still alive. It had already proven to be a very expensive detour, so she should do what she came for, right…? 

Hahaha. Sunk cost, what? 

She collected her ruined coat and went to find the cat anyway. 

Walking around in the area behind the 'tresspasers will be prosecuted' sign made her keenly aware that she was doing something illicit, and with every step she felt less comfortable. Surely someone would catch her, and then she'd be in trouble. She twisted her hands in her ripped coat. Nobody came.

The buildings were squat, dark, featureless and numerous, but surely most of them were locked up – Anita would just poke around their outsides and see… 

Anita headed further into the compound, footsteps echoing on the empty buildings. Above, the sky was growing darker with the threat of rain. With her coat in tatters she’d get really cold, really fast if she was caught in a downpour. She hunched her shoulders and hurried. 

It transpired that Anita didn’t have to look very far to find signs of the cat: it was bleeding onto the cement, and had left little dark spots in its wake. Great, now she felt _really_ bad. How much blood was there inside a cat? Probably a lot less than inside a person, so every drop on the ground represented a proportionally higher amount of blood… 

Oh, no. 

At least that would make the cat easier to find. She followed one spot to another, and then when she couldn’t see more she kept going in the same general direction until she found the next smear. The trail led her, gritting her teeth at the sensation of the new scrapes and small punctures on her thighs meeting the inner seams of her jeans, to the cracked open door of a building she was pretty sure should have been locked. It made sense that a scared, injured cat would dive for a small dark place. 

Anita shoved the door open with one hip, wincing at the noisy scrape of the moving metal on the concrete floors. It seemed so loud in the quiet. She paused, but nothing came after it: no voices, no footsteps, no indication that anybody was coming.

Gingerly she peered inside, ignoring the way her stomach flipped over. She'd have to be nuts to move in across from this place. She was going to find the cat, make sure it wasn't dead, and then leave and never come back.

There was no light inside, just a bunch of shapes that could have been anything, dimly illuminated by the daylight of the overcast clouds that streamed in through the half-open door. Anita scanned the floor, hoping that she’d been wrong, but no – there was already another spot of blood, and half a little paw print smeared right into it nearby, from where the poor thing had trodden in its own fluids. 

_Dammit._

Anita fumbled her phone out of her pocket and flipped the screen open to light the walls nearest the door. There was no reason to expect that the power would be connected, but if it was, this seemed like the reasonable spot for someone to put a light switch. 

There was nothing there, exactly, but just a little further in was a huge, old-fashioned knife switch that she guessed might have the same purpose. Anita didn’t have a really good frame of reference for the age or use of such switches. This whole place seemed pretty industrial, and maybe that was preferred. She hesitated for a second, squinting in the low light from her phone screen, but the switch wasn’t labelled. It did seem to be in the right spot for a light. 

She threw the switch. 

It groaned, but hit ‘on’ with no real resistance. Something gave a fitful little hum deeper in the room and popped, and then… it stopped. 

Well, that was anticlimactic. Anita wasn’t sure if that meant the generator had been drained dry or… well. It was still dark, so she kept her phone flipped open and used it to light as much as she could, then commenced making stupid kissy noises in the hope that they would mysteriously attract the injured cat, or at least let it know that a friendly human was trying to approach. 

Looking around for any hint of white fur, Anita wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the equipment in the room – it all seemed more or less to be turned off, and mostly it functioned only as big, shadowy obstacles to her searching. She had the impression of large, extensively-articulated metal workings and flat black plastics, as well as many cables dangling here and there (which was definitely in violation of workplace health and safety regulations, just saying). Deeper and deeper into the room there was a hum, a fitful and unhappy little noise, punctuated with soft crackles, and she wondered if maybe she had accidentally turned something on in her search for a light switch after all. 

Yeah, this place was getting creepier by the second, and she hadn’t liked it to begin with. Anita was definitely going to grab this cat and leave without hanging around too long. She could swaddle it in her ruined coat and get it out with her, at least as far as the fences. 

Anita’s foot caught on a stray loop of cabling. "Wha—!" 

She yelped, and her phone went flying, followed by the rest of her as she staggered. She flung out one hand, hoping to find something on which to balance. Her fist did indeed hit something in the dark, and she, and all the items balanced on that piece of equipment – whatever it even was – went crashing to the ground in a cascading clatter of metal and swearing. 

With the crash, something deeper in the room stopped its fitful humming and instead crackled to life, uncertain and frayed connections forced back together for a single, blinding moment with the impact. Beneath her hands and knees, the ground itself was humming, and seemed made of something strange and plasticky. 

The whole room was lit in a flash of light from some unreliable piece of equipment, bright enough to make Anita flinch at the change. 

In that second, she could see – she could see wires, thick and insulated, and across the walls and roof, strange traces, as though she was sprawled out across the pad of some enormous circuit board. As though the whole damn room as an enormous circuit board upon which she’d fallen, taking the place of some vital connective component. 

There was a shower of sparks somewhere nearby, light bouncing off the walls, and then Anita felt like – she – 

– she blinked, and felt immediately disoriented. There was pain, and smoke, yes, and something reeked of singed hair and melting plastic, but she was oriented differently in the room, and… and… 

Her arms were – 

– her arm was on _fire?_

“Shit,” she croaked, panicked, and rolled over, slamming her arm into the ground to put out the flames. What even was that? “Shit!” 

Everything felt blisteringly hot, even when she tried to breathe. Her skin felt like it would melt off. Anita yelled, wordlessly. 

More sparks. The smell of burning. Singed metal. The room lit up. 

Anita saw in that brightness the slitted pupils and frightened snarl of the fluffy white cat, hidden beneath a table in one corner. Stupid fucking thing. Stupid fucking _her_ , anyway – 

– Her heart was going so fast, faster than Anita had even thought possible, _that_ certainly could not be good – her pulse pounded in her boiling hot neck, in her blistering ears, behind her seething eyes, like some separate living thing hammering against her body, terrified, desperate to get out. 

Everything went dark. Not the dark of a badly lit room: pitch black. Lightless, empty. 

Anita could not hear her heart. She could not hear anything at all. She couldn’t feel, or see, or smell or taste; there was nothing. But she was not dead, and she was sure she was moving. 

All this for a cat, she thought numbly. 

Anita loved cats – she was enough of a bleeding heart to make some time to try to take strays to the vet to check their chips, if she was honest. She had a weakness for sleek, clever, cute things, and she liked their attitudes and their sharp little claws and their raspy tongues. 

But if she’d been asked, directly, ‘how hurt are you willing to get to rescue a cat?’ the answer would probably have been tat Anita was prepared to face a few scratches and scrapes and cat-sized claws and teeth. 

She was not willing to court serious injury over a cat. 

… maybe if it had been _her_ cat, okay, but she hadn’t been allowed to keep one for over a decade, and… 

And anyway, if you’d asked her if she was prepared to go through burns, serious agony and condemnation to a lightless, soundless hell in exchange for a stray cat, Anita would have politely declined. No, thank you, and _what a strange but unsettlingly specific question_ , and good bye. 

But here she was. 

And what seemed like a geological age later, Anita found what felt like a single, narrow, very well hidden path in this numb darkness, so she followed it… 

A voice, grating and unctuous, seemed to filter through to her: _something to do with the quality of medical care around here_ , drawled someone, distant and echoing. 

Silence resumed. After a second, she followed the direction from which the voice had come. She couldn’t say what she might find, but anything was better than nothing. 

Anita had no idea how much time had passed, and even less idea what was going on, when she finally found a way out. Not a very well-signposted way out, mind you, but after an interminable, eternal moment trapped in the senseless darkness, she was willing to take what she could get. So she followed it up, up, and – 

– became abruptly aware that, whatever that had been, it was all just—nonsense. 

She had been dreaming, or hallucinating, or something. When she found the energy to open her eyes and move, Anita would undoubtedly find herself in the same abandoned research facility. Maybe she’d even find herself staring at the same cat. If it existed. Her memories were hazy. Stupid thing. A stupid thing that Anita would undoubtedly still whisk away to the damn vet, if she could catch it… but still, stupid. 

Before any of that, though, Anita had to somehow motivate herself to open her eyes. 

It was not easy. She felt floaty and disconnected from everything around her, including her own body. It was comfortable, if heavy. Like being held down by a lead blanket, really, but… heavier. And hopefully less toxic. 

She drifted like that for a bit, strangely unmotivated and not even very concerned about it until the sound of voices interrupted her vague, confused drifting. 

There were definitely not meant to be voices in the abandoned buildings. That was why they were abandoned! 

The tone and the timbre of the voice she could make out sounded like a rich, expressive… real estate salesperson. Somebody determined to sell you something very, very expensive, and who knew you might not be fully prepared to buy it. Anita instantly mistrusted it, even though she couldn’t yet make out what it was saying. Her mistrust was probably due to her recent experiences with _actual_ real estate agents, with their oily fast talk and slick smiles and constant emails and texts. 

“...if you would be so kind as to provide your _expert_ medical opinion to Soundwave,” the voice was saying when it came into proper hearing range. It dropped a little lower, a little more purring, “for the – _historical record_.” 

Anita had no idea what this meant, and half-dismissed it as another weird hallucinatory imagining, but it came accompanied by a click-tap, click-tap, like the tapping of someone’s stalking footsteps, and a much heavier thumping _clank clank clank._

Both noises got louder as the voices did, as they came (presumably—?) closer to where Anita lay. 

Why was anybody even giving a medical opinion in a derelict research facility, anyway...? 

The voices were going to want her to explain herself any second now, she felt sure of it. And that meant she had to open her eyes, sit up, and talk. Worry nibbled at her insides, but it was a distant thing. Usually worry hit her in a rush of adrenaline and sudden, swooping illness, especially around other people. But she was too tired. 

She tried, and got nothing but blackness and stillness. Her eyes were too heavy or something. Her stupid brain even imagined its own error message – and then when she focused on that ridiculous idea, she imagined several more, blight blue. Blue like blood, she thought idly. Blue like a warning. And then she stopped, confused. Blood and warnings were not blue, and – 

“Simply put,” came a new voice, much closer, “unaided, Megatron could remain in this _deathly slumber_ forever.” 

What? 

Antia frowned, although she didn’t feel her face actually move with the feeling. Who even spoke like that? And how was a ‘deathly slumber’ any sort of medical opinion? Did the guy mean a coma? Was someone comatose? 

For a second, Anita thought it might be _her_ , but she didn’t think anybody was going to start calling her ‘Megatron’ for no reason. Perhaps… if her body had been found by someone, they might have taken her to a medical clinic, but surely they’d go with ‘the patient’, or maybe they’d just have found her ID. ‘Megatron’ was, uh, a little creative. 

Maybe Megatron was the cat, she thought loopily. That was a _great_ name for a cat. Especially such a big and fluffy one… yes... what a good cat name… 

Anita felt hopelessly confused. Her thoughts were dreamlike and muddled, interspersed with sudden flashes of weird and violent dreams that perversely didn't even seem to bother her, and the conversation that these strange men were having – so nearby that they had to have noticed her! – was only adding to it. 

The oily surely-you-can-afford-the-repayments-it’s-only-a-little-out-of-your-budget-ma’am voice took up the thread again, lamenting, “Our master would not have wanted to be seen this way,” in an attitude of exaggerated concern and grief. “To stand _idly by_ while he remains captive in his own body is… not _just_.” 

Somebody give this guy an Emmy, Anita thought vaguely. There were actual daytime soap actors who weren’t trying this hard. She couldn’t even _see_ him. 

He sounded like an inheriting grandchild trying to get the next of kin to pull the plug on dear old grandma, if you asked Anita. Which nobody had. 

Maybe she was in a hospital, she thought suddenly. In a shared ward? Although… that oily voice sure sounded like it could afford a private room... 

…She really didn’t get this ‘master’ thing they kept saying, that was kind of skeevy, (or else maybe, like, something for private), but other people’s relationships weren’t her business. What _she_ needed to focus on was wrenching her damn eyes open. 

There was the hiss and whirr of some mechanical movement, and then the second, somehow less melodramatic voice hummed. “Ah. Yes. Brainwave activity,” he said, although she’d not heard anyone even ask a question. “Not evidence of consciousness,” he elaborated. “Merely of an endless dream, from which… Oh!”

A short, surprised pause.

Then the voice went flat, and added: “From which Lord Megatron is currently waking.” 

“What!” squawked that real estate salesman voice, sounding torn between outrage and fear. Not quite so oily-smooth now, huh. 

“In fact, he can probably _hear us already_ ,” said the other one, with pointed emphasis. “Welcome back to the land of the functioning, my Lord.” 

With effort, Anita finally pried open her eyes. 

The first thing she saw was red. 

She blinked, slowly. 

It was recognisably a face, but Anita did not recognise it as a _human_ one. The eyes were wide and backlit, glowing a warm red. There was no nose at all. And the face itself was inset into a bright red head, smooth, utterly white and completely unblemished. It was not a bad or ugly face: on the contrary, it was actually very cute.

It just made Anita wonder if, like, she’d been in a coma for sixty years and Apple, Inc. was now manufacturing adorable robots or something. If her phone had been this expressive, she’d never have forgotten to recharge it. 

It didn't look happy to see her, necessarily, but she couldn't tell what expression the strange face was making. She could hear, faintly, the dull whirr of mechanisms active behind that cute face as the red eyes refocused. The bands of light she could see in them seemed to expand and contract and zoom in while she watched. 

Blinking her own eyes, Anita raised her hand to touch the impossibly smooth surface. It reflected a little like metal, but its grain was so fine it was almost more like glass. 

The hand Anita lifted was a huge, silvery paw, each finger tipped in its own razor point. For a dreamlike second, it did not quite sink in that _this_ was the hand responding to her intentions, and then when it did she jolted, startled—what was _that_?—and her hand clanked clumsily against that smooth white face. 

“Ah!” The red-eyed face jerked away. One hand, attached to an arm covered in red metal in a shade that reminded her of hard candy, swung up reflexively as though to ward off a much more serious blow. “ _Easy_ on the finish, if you don't mind—" an abrupt, nervous pause, and then in a totally different voice, "—Lord Megatron.” 

Anita wasn’t listening. Her own hand had captured her attention entirely. It was huge, and spiky-sharp and very dangerous looking. It wasn’t a glove, either—at least, she didn’t think it was. Her whole arm was encased in some kind of dark fantasy nightmare suit of armour. And then, when she wrenched her head up stiffly to look down at her body, she saw it was not just her arm but _all_ of her… 

Nothing felt quite right, or quite proportionate. 

“Moving might not yet be wise,” the red-eyed thing was saying, arms crossed and body language wary and closed off. He—for he had a voice that Anita thought sounded like a he, and she interpreted it as male and didn't question the assumption—made no move to stop her, though. Anita hesitated on his advice anyway. It did hurt to lift her head too much, and she _was_ hazy and confused. 

She opened her mouth to ask what the hell was going on, but belatedly remembered that Mr Real Estate Salesman would still be here, somewhere, and that made her nervous. Her eyes sought out the room’s other figures, scanning past the slightly menacing aesthetic of sharp geometric designs, coloured wall lights, black walls and incomprehensible but complex looking touch screen displays to find them. 

The first thing she noticed was that neither of them had one of those sleek, white faces or bright glossy shells. Both were darker, and less… well, less _obviously_ cute. Instead they were sharp and angular, one faceless with a plate as black as polished obsidian, the other red-eyed and grey, with seriously dramatic metal eyebrows. 

Given that he was the only one of them with a mouth, Anita picked the dark grey one as Mr Real Estate Salesman, and— 

The faceless one with the black body abruptly pointed right at—past?—Anita. She twitched.

Mr Real Estate Salesman gave a short, interested hum, and then said, in his dramatic and obsequious voice, “Do not worry, my lord, your faithful servant will get to the bottom of this… anomaly.” 

Red Eyes rolled his red eyes, right where it could be seen by everybody but Mr Real Estate Salesman, who was busy leaning past Anita where she lay, confused, on her... her sick bed?

Maybe he was a competitor brand of cute robot, spindly and cool-looking but decidedly uncute... Christ, he was so close she could smell him, a mix of heady smells that made her think of both petrol, iron and thunderstorms. 

He tugged at a glowing cable she could see in her peripheral, and Anita twitched to realise that it was connected to her in some way. She didn’t like the tug. She grunted at the sensation. 

_Don't let him come that close_ , warned some latent thing in Anita's brain. There was a weird flash of—memory? A strange violent urge? She didn't know, but Anita could see, in her mind's eye, her big silvery paw on his wing (that was a _wing?_ ), twisting and crushing. She could almost hear the metal crack.

_**Don't let him come that close.** _

“Wait, what—” she began. Her low, growling voice startled her into increasingly stressed silence. What the hell was…? She knew one thing, and it was that Mr Real Estate Salesman was too close. “Get away from me,” she growled. He flinched, which wasn’t exactly what she was going for. 

__

“One moment, my Lord,” he refuted her, cringing away and yet still pulling at the cable.

__

Something low in Anita's body kicked on with a thump she could _feel_ , and her whole person seemed to come to life with a rush of terrible chemical alertness. Anita froze. Was she having a panic attack? She didn't feel like she was having a panic attack. Why was she humming?

__

Red Eyes had taken a step away, looking at her with a wary expression and a grim slant to his mouth.

__

Mr Real Estate Salesman was less perturbed and more intent on his goal. 

__

“Oh, I see. Ah…” he purred then, low and surprisingly predatory.

__

Unfamiliar things inside Anita's bizarre, untrustworthy body clicked over and hissed at the tone.

__

His head came up, and his eyes zoomed in, and the protruding wings on his back twitched to attention. It reminded Anita of nothing so much as a dog recognising a treat and coming to attention. “Intruders.” 

__

A sharp, feminine voice sounded from somewhere below, but it was unclear. Anita, all systems humming and heart thumping—if she had a heart—craned her neck, but all she saw was a flash of something blue. 

__

Footsteps clattered, heavy and loud—the silent, black and purple figure in the room took one heavy step, towards her bed, things deep within it hissing steady and metallic—

__

Then the thunderous noise of gunfire burst through the room. _Boom, boom, boom_.

__

Anita discovered that she had definitely not been having a panic attack before, because her body responded with a flood of crackling stress: everything turned sharp and bright, the sounds became deafening, and she picked out bizzare, irrelevant details.

__

She cringed further down on the bed, as though that would make her a less likely target. 

__

Something buzzed spitefully and prickled over her skin. A flash of blinding light dazzled her for a moment. 

__

Mr Real Estate Salesman whirled in motion with his own weapon, turned away from Anita, looking focused and weirdly competent, given how he'd presented himself. 

__

Sparks scored painful little burns over her chest as a fresh blast struck the nearby equipment, and the whole room bloomed with the reek of firecrackres. 

__

Before she could do more than yelp, there was an even brighter flash and then—and then dead silence, except for the hissing and ticking of cooling metal bodies, and the steady _thump-thump-thump_

__of Anita's own heart._ _

____

Smoke hung in the quiet air, a blue-grey cloud that muted the colours and dispersed the light in strange, unexpected ways, shimmering on the metal skins of the... robots... The robots. Because robots. Anita shuddered from her head to her heels. With a soft metal sigh, her skin cracked open along its seams and then, immediately after, clamped shut again. It wasn't a good feeling. 

____

There was a whirr and a buzz and the grey, pointed one who’d been so hot to remove Anita’s life support—and who had, apparently, just shot someone who was shooting at Anita or something, so she guessed maybe she shouldn’t call him ‘Mr Real Estate Salesman’, after all—sort of… rearranged some of his own body parts. Weapons folded away, disappearing neatly back into spaces that were… inside him? Possibly? 

____

“A ground bridge,” he said. His voice must have naturally sounded like, uh, like that. All he seemed to make were the mechanical version of a low and throaty purr, or a whining nasal plea. “Get those shields repaired,” he—yep, he whined. “And put an extra guard in here.” His sharp, red eyes narrowed upon Anita again. “It would be a shame if anything _untoward were to happen to our Lord Megatron during his… recovery.”_

____

_Was ‘Lord Megatron’ seriously what they were calling _her?_ Was she named after the cat? _

____

_Before Anita had thought to even comment, he was gone—striding away with his metal feet click-snapping on the floors, a little too fast to be polite._

____

Was he running from her? 

____

Red Eyes was examining the readings delivered by one of the consoles. “Now, _that’s_ odd,” he mused, settling his weight on one hip. The metal didn’t even creak. 

____

His silent, black-and-purple shadow stepped forward to read over his shoulder. 

____

“What’s odd?” Anita asked. _Other than every part of this situation,_ she added internally. She looked down at her hand again. If she touched the tiny, fresh scorch marks on her front, they stung just like recent burns. Was the armour her skin? It sure felt like her skin. 

____

“While I wouldn’t usually recommend a cortical psychic patch on an _already comatose_ patient, I would expect its disruption to show effects right about...” He tapped one of his own shiny claws at the console’s screen, “here.” 

____

The part of the pattern his claw struck was pretty much the same as those that came before and after. There wasn’t so much as a blip. 

____

“A cortical what?” Anita said. Her voice was _so deep_ , she didn’t even know what to think about it. She was definitely, like, a man. Or… not even a man, maybe. 

____

The pattern on he screen was pretty much meaningless to her. 

____

“A… cortical psychic patch, Lord Megatron,” Red Eyes said slowly and, uh, suspiciously. “Used to patch one mechanism into the mind of another. We have used them on your order before,” he added. 

____

That sounded, um, incredibly skeevy. 

____

“You don’t remember,” said Red Eyes, then. His eyes narrowed with a soft, telltale whirr. “Well.” He glanced at the console and its steady, repeating patterns again, nervously. “That can… sometimes happen, in, ah, rare cases. Very rare," he added in a mutter, when he turned back to the console and expanded a particular visualisation. 

____

And now he was subtly positioning Anita between himself and the dark, angular figure who had so far not said a word. 

____

That dark figure broke its silence, finally, and said, “ _—utmost care will be taken, of course. As his doctor, it’s my job to ensure our lord and leader has a body to return to, once he wakes—_ ” 

____

It took Anita a moment to recognise it as Red Eyes’ voice, being played back to them both, quieter and a little tinnier. 

____

“Well,” he said, uncomfortably, “That is—Soundwave—” 

____

“ _Of course_ ,” came Red Eyes’ recording again. “ _I’m the best in the business._ ” 

____

“I did say that, didn’t I,” muttered the real Red Eyes, here and now. “Very well, I’ll… look into it. Can’t have a Decepticon leader with brain module damage, I suppose.” He didn’t sound thrilled. 

____

“ _Keep that to yourself_ ,” came the tinny, recorded voice of Mr Real Estate Salesman. “ _Soundwave hears everything_.” 

____

At this, Red Eyes went utterly still.

____

Anita looked between them, trying to follow.

____

After a short, tense moment, Red Eyes said, “You… ah, heard that conversation, Soundwave?” 

____

“ _Soundwave hears everything,_ " the clip repeated. The robot's visor remained absolutely blank. 

____

Red Eyes was quiet for a few moments more.

____

Then he seemed to relax again. He heaved a deep breath, air hissing out through his shiny metal chassis. “Well, there are a number of things that can shake a little episodic data loose. I’ll see what I can do.” 

____

The tall, silent and blackmaily Soundwave nodded once and left with just one, lingering glance over at Anita. 

Red Eyes turned back to her. “Let’s begin, shall we, Lord Megatron?” he asked. His mouth curved in a false little smile, and she wasn’t sure if it was meant to be reassuring or not. 

She certainly didn't feel reassured. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this original character fic, but I'm not really sure if it's the original character fic I wanted to write. I'm shopping around for the Right Original Character Fic Just For Me, I think. ;-; RIP Anita
> 
> However if you liked something about this, please feel free to let me know in a comment (if you would like to comment).


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